Cross posted from PlayStation

You may have noticed that I havenā€™t posted much news in the past few days. You may also have noticed that a fair few gaming news sites have gone a bit off the deep end recently.

Thereā€™s lots of examples if you follow gaming news especially with the saga surrounding Sweet Baby Incā€™s ā€œharassmentā€ by gamers.

But one of things I wanted to highlight was IGNā€™s absolutely shocking take that Resident Evil 5 is racist and must not be remade and must be rewritten. Why is it racist you ask. Iā€™ll let IGNā€™s own Matt Purslow explain.

Set in a fictional West African country, Resident Evil 5ā€™s primary antagonists are Black people. Intentionally or not, Resident Evil 5 positions Africa as the ā€˜Dark Continentā€™, an uncivilised world harbouring a diseased population that needs gunning down via Western intervention in the name of global security.

In the 2020s, in a post-Black Lives Matter world, there is only one acceptable response to a white man shooting waves of Africans for an entire video game: no.

Matt Purslow. IGN

The fact IGN awarded RE5 a 9/10 is conveniently omitted from this opinion piece as is the fact that IGN gave Resident Evil 4, a game with a white man shooting waves of Spanish for an entire video game a 10/10.

Itā€™s the worst take possible and one IGN is sticking to but silencing people that want to call them out by disabling comments on their website and Twitter. A YouTube version of the article is currently sitting on 2,000 likes and 15,000 dislikes.

The second big oof of the week comes courtesy of EA game studio Cliffhangar Games who are currently working on the Black Panther game.

Dani Lalonders of Cliffhanger Games has gone on record stating the studio is 100% ā€œpeople of colourā€ and she will not hire white people because they ā€œcreate unsafe environments, are hard to work with and create micro aggression.ā€

Unfortunately Iā€™m not making that up. I wish I was but itā€™s very very real and very racist and discriminatory.

Now obviously the games press is defending her and Sweet Baby Inc and it seems like GamerGate 2.0 is in full swing and the games ā€œjournalistsā€ and game developers are closing ranks to tell gamers that weā€™re the problem and we will do and think as weā€™re told.

So I simply wonā€™t be visiting these sites and as I wonā€™t use ā€œtraditionalā€ social media (Twitter, TikTok, Facebook) I wonā€™t be keeping up with the news.

I also wonā€™t be buying any new games for a while, especially EA games as I wonā€™t support racism in any form.

So for a while the community will be some micro and full scale reviews Iā€™m working and a few more opinion pieces (not racist ones like IGN publish) and the odd rant.

It sucks that this is necessary but the trend that started in Hollywood then spread to TV that the fans are the bad guys has unfortunately made it to the gaming industry.

    • beaxingu@kbin.run
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      8 months ago

      just calling people incels on the internet seems like a very well adjusted thing to do. sounds like someone with no good arguments. and thats just funny.

  • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Gamergate was so stupid the first time around. All the journos had to do was ignore it, and there wouldnt have been any streisand effect.

    Only difference now is that theyre working directly with the studios and got homeland security poking in, and no one has spoken to the UN this tims.

    • MaddieTianOP
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      8 months ago

      I think the answer this time is to not visit the gaming news sites and not play along with whatever it is they think theyā€™re doing.

      Just play games (but not EA games) and leave them to their own weird world.